THEORY - Age

Question 1

+FUNCTIONALISM - Parsons 1

Answer 1

Youth is a time associated with growing up and learning adult roles, norms and values which is key for social stability eventually, through the use of agencies of social (formal and informal). Inequality for youth is functional because it socializes them.

Question 2

FUNCTIONALISM - Parsons + Eisenstadt

Answer 2

Youth is a time associated with growing up and learning adult roles, norms and values which is key for social stability eventually, through the use of agencies of social (formal and informal). Inequality for youth is functional because it socializes them.

Question 3

FUNCTIONALISM - Parsons 2

Answer 3

Elderly people become less physically able to maintain their roles, specifically in the world of work. Different age groups learn new roles that lead to further cohesion and solidarity (eg, grandparents providing childcare).

Question 4

FUNCTIONALISM - Cummings and Henry (disengagement theory).

Answer 4

As we age our abilities deteriorate. As this process happends there is a mutual need (you and society) for you to be releived of your responsibilities and roles. The gap must be filled for social stability to be maintained. A process of disengaement helps to manage that possible social instability, eg. having a retirement age allows a managed disengaement.

Question 5

FUNCTIONALISM - Ao3

Answer 5

• Their assumption of homogenity is not always correct: not all elderly people deteriorate at the same rate/age.
• Their views ignore the negative experiance of ageing (according to age UK, moew than 2 million people in England over the age of 75 live alone, and more than a million older people say they go over a month without speaking to a friend, neigbour or family member) .
• Not all elderly people are able to take on a new role and stay happy and fufilled and not all youth will be successfully guided by the agents of socialisation and may not leave deviant behaviour behind.

Question 6

MARXISM - Engles (reserve army of labour)

Answer 6

He coined the term ‘reserve army of labour’ to argue that having a secondary source labour group (also known as the precariat) is a necessary part of capitalism, eg. the unemployed, the underemployed, the young and the elderly. They are used at boom times as temporary/’flexiable labour’, eg. zero hour contracts. Age inequallity is a social construction to benefit the bourgeoisie.

Question 7

NEO-MARXISM - Gramsci (false class consciousness)

Answer 7

Gramsci discusses the importance of how the bourgeoisie maintain authority. False consciousness - people do not realise their exploitation because of the consession they receive. Child benefits and pensions act as a form of this, creating a depencay, legitmating the need for the powers of authority. The elderly + the youth do not question their exploitation, accepting things such as zero-hour contracts.

Question 8

MARXISM - Phillipson

Answer 8

Phillison argues that capitalism needs to continually renew its workforce to ensure greater profit by using productive and energetic young workers - this means that having a society where the elderly are institutionally marginalised as they are a burden on the economy. This happens through a process of institutional dependancy - they are denied acsess to work, they are forced into reitrement, their status lowers (especially in societies where stauts is linked to the ‘means of production).

Question 9

MARXISM - Ao3

Answer 9

• Their assumption of homogenity is not always correct: not all elderly people deteriotate at the same rate/age and also gender, ethnicity, disability and walth all affect one’s experiance of old age, eg. in many industries, the elderly are not systematically marginalised and are able to work into their old age such as high court judges or political ministers.
• With growth of the ‘grey pound’, the elderly as consumers means that they have become much more of an asset to the bourgeoisie and the economy.

Question 10

FEMINISM - Arber and Ginn

Answer 10

When looking at women and inequality, factors such as age will affect their power and status, i.e. older women will face inequalities that older men do not (eg, media representation).

Question 11

FEMINISM - Itzin

Answer 11

Women face double standards - where man[s status is directly linked to employment, women[s status is linked to their reproductive cycle. In a patriarcha society, women’s status devalues post-childbaring age, regardless of wealth and background. Older women therefore feel immense pressure to fight the signs of ageing through cosmeticisation which capitalised on by many industries.

Question 12

FEMINISM - Daly

Answer 12

The way the patriarchy treats older women has similarities to many global practicies where women are made to comply to patriarhcy, eg. genital mutilation.

Question 13

FEMINISM - General ao3

Answer 13

They are known for being reductionists. Feminist work will always begin from patriarchy being the cause of inequality - meaing that sometimes they may miss the true cause, eg. poverty.

Question 14

FEMINISM - Postmodernist Ao3

Answer 14

The stucturalist, macro approach of feminist thinking ignores the facct that women, old or young, are not a homogenous group and factors such as wealth and social class greatly fragment different women’s life chances. (We saw this critisicm played out in the waves of feminism).

Question 15

FEMINISM - Currie’s AO3

Answer 15

Currie argues that feminists are out of date because males are also going through pressure to cosmeticise, eg. For Him Magazine. Cosmeticisation is not a forced process but one that people choose to take part in believing that they can control the ageing process for their own subjective reasons, not always due to age related Stigma.

Question 16

(Social action theory) WEBERIAN - Weber

Answer 16

To understand someone’s experiances and the complex nature of their inequality, you need to look at three parts of their life: social class, market position, and status.

This explains why low status (young and old, due to not helping the economy) can be trumped by social class, eg. the queen.

Question 17

(Social action theory) Parkin

Answer 17

Some people suffer in negativley privleged status groups (eg, ethic minorities) where they’re excluded from other privleged groups due to social segregation through media, through invisability from positivie portrayal, in employment, through retirement and even in living arrangements such as living in care homes.

Question 18

(Social action theory) ACTIVITY THEORY AO3 - Havinghurt’s criticism of Cummings and Henry

Answer 18

Havinghurst is heavily critical of the disengagement theory because he argues that maintaining these interactions reduces the negative experiance of ageing, eg. Statham’s research on grandparents found that providing childcare actaully reduces isolation.

Question 19

(Social action theory) Turner

Answer 19

Argues that in western society, the young and the old are stigmatizes due to not having what it takes to gain high status (ie, do not control social recources and do not have material goods valued in a consumer society).

Reciprocity-maturation curve of ageing

In a ‘gerontocracy’ power and age are interlinked and the elderly will have high status - it’s not just about economic status but also about values of a society.
Dependancy = low status

Question 20

(Social action theory) INTERACTIONISM - Hockey and James

Answer 20

They argue that the elderly are often labeled with infantalization, a stigmatization which portrays them as ‘weak’ and ‘unable to look after themselves’ (eg, one in three people aged 50 and over believe they have been turned down for a job because of their age).

Question 21

(Social action theory) INTERACTIONISM - Victor

Answer 21

Negative labelling of the young and the old by agents of social control (such as the media) can become a self fufilling prophecy due to them internalizing that.

Question 22

(Social action theory) INTERACTIONISM - Cohen

Answer 22

Cohen argues that ‘moral panics’ often are centred around youth culture in which the media deamonize the youth and sensationalize certain events. (Eg, he found that the fight between the mods and the rockers on Brighton beach wasn’t as bad as it was made out to be by the press, however the youths internalized those labels and then started to participate in worse deviant behaviour).

Question 23

(Social action theories) INTERACTIONISM - Corner

Answer 23

Older people are described as a burden to the NHS and family, they suffer loneliness and more ill health because of it. (eg, “Hundreds of thousands of elderly people are lonely and cut off from society in this country, especially those over the age of 75” - NHS).

Question 24

AO3 of Social action theories

Answer 24

• They fail to recognize the structural causes of inequality such as patriarchy and capitalism.
• Approaches such as the activity theory ignores the instituational ageism that is at the basis of many laws and practices within a society, and structuralists (conflic theorists) would question what conclusions can actually be drawn from these ideas.

Question 25

POSTMODERNISM - Polhemus

Answer 25

Argues that homogenity does not exist. Polhemus focuses on youth being a non-homogenous group shopping at the ‘supermarket of style’, thus you cannot create one theory of inequality for all.

Question 26

POSTMODERNISM - ‘The grey pound’

Answer 26

While many theories talk about old age as a time of marginalisation and isolation, consumer culture proves it to be the opposite. ‘The Grey Pound’ is used to describe older people with extra money to spend, and advertizers often focus on that - adjusting their buisness to appeal to ‘The Grey Pound’.

Question 27

POSTMODERNISM - Laczko and Phillipson

Answer 27

They researched early retirement and found the inequality faced was due to wealth, not age. (eg, richer people are less likely to be isolated because they can afford to attend events + clubs etc).

Question 28

POSTMODERNISM - Featherstone and Hepworth

Answer 28

They argued that traditional explinations of age inequality focus too much on imaginary, socially constructed boundaries of age (eg, The number of persons aged 80 years or older is expected to triple between 2020 and 2050 to reach 426 million. Meaning that older people are getting healthier in their old age).

Question 29

POSTMODERNISM - Blakie

Answer 29

Argues that there is very much an experience of ‘positive ageing’ - a fourth age fi2lle with active but leisure based pursuits (eg, University of 3rd age)

Question 30

POSTMODERNISM - Powell and Biggs2

Answer 30

They argue that some older people fights the ageing process with cosmeticisation and surgery, this allows some to continually recreate themselves. (This can be hard to find evidence for though because if someone is wealthy enough to afford this surgery, they may well be already experiancing less isolation, marginalisation and discrimination).